Recommended games in Beat 'Em Up

Rocket Ski Racing a "very solid game" - 4/5 from Touch Arcade

In Rocket Ski Racing you play as a skier with a rocket strapped to his or her back, and you must race. (I mean, if it wasn’t clear from the title.) There are six different snow covered courses that twist and curve and loop around, and you have to get to the finish line before your multicolored opponents do. Each race is usually pretty quick, with around 5 laps that whiz by in under a minute. They go by so fast, in fact, that one of the keys to success is memorizing when and where to turn, since you can’t always see very far ahead and there’s no map.

While there are plenty of Pac-Man games on iOS, Globber’s Escape is still a solid little take on the genre. And its touch controls where you just tap where you want Globber to go work well to where it’s kind of a surprise more normal Pac-Man games just don’t use that. Anyway, it’s still a pretty solid little game to check out, and if you haven’t, now’s not a bad time with the game’s update available on iOS.

Nival’s Defender 2 - "Balance of Tower" - 3.5/5 from Touch Arcade

Take Nival’s Defenders 2, for instance. It’s a tower defense game, and like most games in that genre (including its predecessor Defenders) you’ve got to carefully consider the placement of every tower and spend your cash wisely to efficiently take out as many creeps as possible without getting overrun. The free-to-play model, however, is full of upgrades and card fusing and all kinds of free-to-play junk that starts to blur the line between strategy and currency-spending. Did I fail that level because I put things in non-optimal positions, or because my cards suck and I need to evolve them up?

Momoka - Touch Arcade Game of the Week

The thing that really sets Momoka apart from those other games and gives it its own feel is when you first get the keys to your very own rocket ship. From there you can blast off and explore an entire solar system of tiny planets that, when you land on them and are exploring on foot, actually feel quite expansive. Flying through the solar system is a trip and tons of fun, and was the moment that I knew Momoka was going to be a special game. Add in the fantastic music and a quirky cast of characters to meet throughout the galaxy and you really can feel all the heart and soul that went into this game.

Pocket Mortys - "You gotta try this, broh" - 4.5/5 from Gamezebo

Anyone familiar with Pokémon will be able to get a feel for the combat pretty quickly. There aren’t 150 Mortys to collect, sadly, but there are over 80 in total and they can be evolved into stronger forms. This is pretty much just as compelling as it was back when we were first introduced to Red and Blue, and there are a lot of really creative looking Mortys to find – even if there’s a lot of overlap in their attack techniques.

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As a fan (not super fan, but a fan) of Rick and Morty, as well as a long-time enjoyer of Pokémon, I’ve been having a lot of fun with Pocket Mortys. It strikes a nice balance between making references to the show and being a somewhat simplified “Gotta Cath ‘Em All!” homage. You gotta try this, broh.

Downtown Showdown - "turns city building into competition" - AppTrigger

There’s nothing quite as pleasantly surprising as a mobile game that starts out looking like one thing and morphs into something else. Downtown Showdown, the second release from Colopl for the western market, is like that. Early on, it seems like just another Sim City-style city-builder, but as you play more, it reveals some more competitive DNA.

That’s because you’re not only trying to build the best city you can, but also to take sides in the conflict between rival businessmen Zach Gold and Bill Banks. On top of that, there’s also a very real competitive multiplayer element, where you have to recruit attacker units to muck up cities built by other players and compete to see who can build the best city in a limited amount of time.

Scribblenauts Unlimited draws a 4.5/5 from Gamezebo

Scribblenauts Unlimited almost lives up to its name. Aside from copyrighted material and most specific people (you can summon George Washington but not Elvis), Scribblenauts Unlimited allows players to create anything they can dream up in order to solve the game’s puzzles.

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Overall, Scribblenauts Unlimited is an excellent game that is great for all ages that allows players room to play however they’d like — though Scribblenauts Unlimited truly shines when players use their imagination.

These games were all phenomenal when they were released, Rockstar knows what they’re doing when it comes to porting them, and it’s hard to beat the price to hours of potential gameplay ratio, particularly when considering you can play a GTA game nearly infinitely if you enjoy just rampaging around the city, getting your wanted level up, and seeing how long you can survive. Of course there’s loads of side quests too, giving you even more to do in a game that’s already packed with content.
If you’re into the idea of playing a GTA game but aren’t sure which one to get, I’d definitely start with San Andreas first. It was designed with the scope of console play in mind, and I think the game world is just a little more interesting. That being said, if you’ve been playing along with every GTA release Rockstar has made on iOS over the years, Liberty City Stories is every bit as must-have as the rest of them.

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